Rock and Roll Night Club EP

The artist formerly known as Makeout Videotape releases an EP of unsettling soft rock that mixes freaky sleaze with a surprising dose of swooning sensitivity.

Before signing to Captured Tracks, Montreal's Mac DeMarco made fuzz pop records with Makeout Videotape, who, based on their album art alone, had strange leanings. On Rock and Roll Night Club, he gets weirder and churns out an unsettling brand of soft rock. Take the album's second track: "You're rockin' straight through midnight with me, Dojo Daniel, on 96.7: The Pipe. Up next, we've got a triple shot of Mac DeMarco comin' at ya, stuffin' it down the chute." That skit is delivered by an unsettling, near-demonic voice. It's a jokey moment, but it plays an unexpectedly crucial role for the rest of the EP: It makes the rest of the songs sound comparatively not-creepy. With vaguely grimy imagery like "standing on the corner/ Tryin' to keep it clean," delivered in his deep, breathy, sleazy voice, it's easy to get weirded out by the album's focal point, which is DeMarco. But stacked against a fictional DJ saying "stuffin' it down the chute" in an even deeper, even sleazier voice? DeMarco goes from being the sleaziest guy in the room to an outright Lothario.

Obviously, the tone here is both goofy and surreal if Night Club can support a creepy DJ skit near the beginning of the album. That weirdness also spills over into his lyrics. "Baby's Wearin' Blue Jeans" has DeMarco fixated on a woman specifically because of her pants, namedropping both Wrangler and Lee in the process. "Straight leg or a boot cut/ I'm begging darling please/ Stay with me forever/ And don't take off those jeans." His smoky voice and denim infatuation is complemented by an echoing, light guitar, which throws in a surprisingly welcome yacht rock aesthetic.

Sometimes, it's difficult to parse his irony from his sincerity, especially in "She's Really All I Need", which mixes Partridge Family optimism with harsh realities. ("I feel like I'm dying" and "Don't bring me down man/ Wearin' that frown man.") It's probably safe to assume that at least 80% of Night Club is laced with a meta joke that nobody's in on except DeMarco. It's usually still pretty funny, or in the very least, intriguingly odd.

He's got a good ear for hooks, too. Behind the hazy, warbling sound quality of the title track, "Blue Jeans", and "European Vegas", there are some excellent, albeit simplistic, guitar hooks. For songs with a fairly limited set of instrumentation-- one guitar, minimal percussion, a quiet undercurrent of bass, the occasional second guitar-- he pulls out some lovely, shimmering melodies. On the same coin, every now and then, he pushes one hook way too far. "Moving Like Mike" is the worst offender, and not only for its Lil' Bow Wow-reminiscent title. The song just repeats the same three phrases over an uninspired Jimmy Buffett acoustic guitar riff.

The biggest surprise comes at the end of the album with "Only You" (which is lifted from Makeout Videotape's Ying Yang) and "Me & Mine", the pair presenting an entirely different aesthetic than the sleazefest that dominates the record's first half. They introduce a jangling, breezy assertiveness that's normally reserved for Real Estate songs. Gone is the deep voiced, jean-focused weirdo from 20 minutes earlier. Here's a guy who's singing in a sincere-sounding pained falsetto over sunny guitars. One song earlier in "I'm a Man", he sang, "I've been creepin' around" in his go-to lower register. On "Only You", he asserts, "Here I am, brand new day," and he sounds like a new man.

It's tough to say which DeMarco is preferable: the swooning clear-eyed baritone of the last two songs or the unsettling deep-voiced emoter of the first eight. Really, I'm a fan of both versions-- the goofy creep and the straightforward crooner. Ultimately, even if one side's more of a caricature, it's a relatively short jump between the DeMarco who sings that "the boogie woogie woman keeps lookin' my way" and the DeMarco who sings, "I'm done crying over her."